


composed of nows

by preromantics



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-12
Updated: 2010-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 21:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"So, you're having a baby."</i> Wherein Rachel is much more than Quinn thought or could have asked for, and home isn't always where Quinn imagined it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	composed of nows

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ on 2/14/10.

“So, you’re having a baby.”

Quinn stares a little, arms folded and rested on her stomach, the elastic of her pants scratching against her stomach. Rachel is standing in front of her, arms crossed over her own chest -- it looks reflexive almost, under the curve of her breast like Quinn has her on top of the curve of her belly.

Rachel leans her weight from one leg to the other, looking almost awkward when Quinn doesn’t answer her. Quinn smiles in a small way, softens what she must know looks like a hard and tired look. “I am,” she says, because Rachel just looks so _expectant_.

“Where are you staying?” Rachel asks -- blurts, more like, and Quinn is taken aback -- then sighs and sits on one of the chairs nearby. “Not to pry, I just --”

“It’s okay,” Quinn says. She sits, too; partly because her back and ankles are starting to hurt and partly because she feels weird standing. Rachel deliberately sitting in front of another standing person is strange enough, and Quinn knows she has some sort of complex about Rachel and has for a while now, (practically the anti-her, except, well, not that much,) so it’s easy enough to just sit down on a chair angled beside her.

“I’m staying at a cousin’s place. They have a pull out couch,” Quinn continues. Rachel frowns at her.

“You should really be sleeping in a bed,” Rachel says, matter-of-fact, “you should be as comfortable as possible with the baby, and you don’t want to cause permanent damage to your back or cause any problems with anything else. Are you eating enough?”

Quinn raises an eyebrow. She glances at the music room door, hoping more people will show up soon; the one on one attention from Rachel is disconcerting. “Since when do you know so much about what is good for me and my -- the baby?” Quinn asks, wincing minutely at how much contempt comes out with it. (She ruined everything with Finn and even with Puck, Quinn tells herself, leveling out her own annoyance. And she also saved Quinn from a lot more stress. Just --)

“Look,” Rachel says, the tone of her voice also changing, “I’ve just been thinking and I’m concerned. I wouldn’t bother, but --”

“Then don’t,” Quinn tells her, looking away. “Then don’t bother.”

Rachel snaps her mouth shut, turning a little in her chair.

Kurt and Mercedes push through the door debating something stupid -- pre and post breakdown Britney, or whatever -- before Quinn can say anything, can say the apology on the tip of her tongue before she even realizes it’s there.

-

Quinn fights with her bag down the hallway in the morning -- she’s stopped using a backpack because the added weight and bend on her back was starting to get to her, and it probably wasn’t good for the baby because the more she reads the more she realizes so many things aren’t.

In the crease of her locker a white envelope corner is sticking out, like someone stuffed it through but couldn’t get it in all the way. It falls to her toes when she opens the locker door and Quinn groans, backing up to bend over awkwardly and pick it up. It simply says her name on the envelope and she tears it open, glancing around the hallway.

Inside is a simple folded sheet of paper with a $100 bill inside. Her first thought is Puck, and she grits her teeth; instead, when she looks at the unfolded sheet the paper is signed with a simple ‘_~R_‘.

-

“Why?” Quinn asks, huffing the word out like an exhale of breath. She’s still a little shocked, maybe touched by the gesture, but she also can’t just accept money from Rachel. (Rachel! Rachel of all people.)

Rachel looks torn at what to say, looking around at the people assembled in their various groups around the room. “You need it -- you both need it,” she says, soft, “It’s the easiest way I can help, since we obviously have so much trouble speaking without one of us wanting to kill the other.” She laughs.

Quinn doesn’t smile, really, but she can feel her brow furrow, the muscles in her face relax. “I can’t accept it,” she says. It almost hurts to say because she could use it, really, her cousin already on her about finding somewhere else or making up with her parents (like her father would ever allow that, and her mother wouldn’t even have the backbone.) She needs food and should probably buy more pre-natal vitamins.

Rachel ducks closer into Quinn space, eyes bright. She rests her hand at the top part of Quinn’s forearm with her thumb pressing into her shoulder, brief and warm. “Just take it okay? If not for me for yourself. As stupid as it is, I want to help.”

Quinn steps back when Rachel drops her hand; someone plays a crashing, despondent chord and they both startle. “Thanks,” Quinn says after a beat, quiet. Nothing else comes, confusion, maybe, but no words to express anything Quinn is and isn’t thinking. “Really.”

Rachel smiles, bright and pleased and it bursts their little personal bubble. “If you need anything, or just to talk. Let me know. I’m always around,” she says, and turns away on her heel.

“From the top, guys!” she says, loud and Rachel-like, addressing the room at large, and Quinn rests one hand on her stomach and grins, walking forward to join everyone. To join Rachel.

-

Quinn still watches the Cheerios practice sometimes, walking to the fields after school and sitting near the top of the bleachers, feeling small and insignificant in both her life and the school hierarchy but still getting some sort of pleasure from matching the complex movements in her head, her toes tingling with it.

Today, though, it’s almost too much. She’s got a duffle of her stuff next to her, stuff from her cousin’s house.

(“Go home, Quinn,” she’d said, “Go back to your family. They’ll take you back, why wouldn’t they? Just apologize.”

“I have nothing to apologize for,” Quinn said back, packing her duffle and holding her chin up, defiant. “And they won’t take me back.”

Yet she’d still tired, gone right to the backdoor of her house -- her parent’s house -- and her mom had stepped out on the porch looking tired and with narrowed eyes and told her, looking back, to leave before her father had seen her and --

And that had hurt, a lot. Probably more than the first time but Quinn got through the entire day not thinking about it, how she had nowhere to go now. )

Watching the (imperfect) form of the Cheerios practicing down on the field, the assistant coach barking at them in a way that is almost laughably intimidating in comparison to Sue is almost too hard and Quinn feels the wet-hot trails on her cheeks before she realizes she’s crying.

The bleachers echo with footsteps, a methodical pounding noise that gets gradually louder and then stops. Quinn feels the weight against her side before Rachel even speaks, registering it as almost a comfortable weight even though she knows instinctively that it’s Rachel. It’s not too shocking of a revelation and that’s maybe a little bit scary.

“Hey,” Rachel says, and Quinn fights the instinct to scoot over on the bleachers and wipes the wetness off her cheeks with her knees, wondering which way her instinct wanted to scoot -- away from Rachel or nearer to her. The line is fuzzy and makes Quinn want to hide her face for a little while longer.

“That’s a big duffle bag,” Rachel says when Quinn doesn’t (can’t) respond.

Quinn lifts her head and squints at Rachel, her hair frizzing at the top and the little strands catching prisms of blue-black light in the sun. “Yeah, it is.”

Rachel sighs, drawn out and almost theatrical. It’s a nuance of being Rachel, Quinn supposes, something like how Quinn always felt -- that she should act at all times like she was in her own movie, but for different reasons than Rachel probably does. Quinn always wanted people to _treat_ her like she was in a movie, but Rachel probably actually wants to be in movies. There’s a difference.

“Where are you staying tonight?” Rachel asks, half a bit harsh and half a bit concerned.

Quinn glances out over at the field, the girls filing towards the school, people she used to count as friends either not sparing a glance at the bleachers or using all their power to direct snide ones that Rachel can pick out even from on the top level. She sighs. “At my cousins,” she lies, easy, still watching the field.

Rachel stands and Quinn is inwardly relieved, listening to the click and pound of Rachel’s heels, but she doesn’t go any further than standing and turning. When Quinn looks up, Rachel has one hand extended to her.

“It’s not much,” Rachel says, one half of her mouth curled up in some semblance of a grin, “and I know you probably think I have some ulterior motive or something, but I don’t. I have a bed with a pull-out mattress on the bottom and it’s better than a couch, cheaper than a hotel, and someone is always cooking in my house.”

Quinn considers her options, thinks about waking up to Rachel’s face in the mornings, talking with her at night like she would have with her old friends at sleepovers or parties or all the things she definitely doesn’t have time for and never will anymore, now. She thinks about how Rachel’s hair might look in the morning, and wonders what she sleeps in and bites her back teeth together at stupid, rushing thoughts that shouldn’t exist.

She takes Rachel’s extended hand and lets herself be pulled up from the bleachers. Rachel yanks and Quinn propels herself with her legs and lands mostly against Rachel, who stumbles back and throws her head back and laughs, bright and sunny.

“Thanks, Rachel,” Quinn says as they walk down the center isle (rhythmic and noisy, poundpoundpound) glancing over and adjusting her duffle. Rachel just smiles and doesn’t say anything, leading the way.

-

Rachel really does have a pull-out mattress under her bed. It’s comfortable too, and after an awkward but warm introduction to both of Rachel’s fathers, Quinn watches from the edge of Rachel’s bed (sunshine yellow sheets) as Rachel methodically readies the pull-out mattress, tucking the sheets in and arranging pillows just so -- like, for some reason, Quinn’s comfort actually matters to her. Quinn blames it on her hormones that she sort of wants to just lay down or maybe let Rachel hug her, because she’s been so wrapped up in everything going downhill that she really didn’t pause and consider who in her life thought she still mattered.

“Uh,” Rachel says, standing back from the bed. Behind her is a portrait of her, grinning and framed -- Quinn half expects to find a gold star sticker somewhere on the matting, but she doesn’t. She grins at it, a little, and then at Rachel, before relaxing her mouth back down. “This should be comfy, but if you find it hard to get up or it’s not comfortable when you start to get bigger --” she motions with her hands at her stomach, here, and Quinn laughs, easy “-- then I’ll just switch with you.”

The mattress is comfortable, even if Quinn has to roll off a little and it will probably be tricky when she’s bigger (and wow, it’s been so long now and she can’t even think about that part, what she’ll do, how long she can even get away with staying at Rachel’s, whatever kick Rachel is on.)

Rachel turns the lights off before she changes, and Quinn only feels a little bad squinting through the dark to see what she’s putting on, curiosity getting the best of her. She can’t see but it sounds swishy and silky when Rachel rolls under her own sheets.

“So,” Rachel says, a little while later into the darkness. “You’re doing this all on your own?”

Quinn grins into her pillow, moving her arm so one of her hands rests on her stomach. “No boys,” she says, agreeing, “yeah.”

“That’s --” Rachel starts, but stops, cutting herself off with a hum. “Brave.”

“It’s scary,” Quinn says after a few seconds, rolling over.

“Exciting?” Rachel asks, quiet and almost close, like maybe she’s hanging off the side of the bed, but Quinn doesn’t roll back over to check as much as she wants to.

She thinks about everything, about how she felt the baby kick the other day and wanted to beam and go tell someone, anyone, but there was no one to tell and yet it was exciting, anyway. It was her baby. “Exciting,” Quinn repeats, a tiny bit unsure, “yeah. That too.” She feels better agreeing, keeping one hand on her stomach and rubbing in tiny circles, smiling into the pillow.

Rachel’s bed squeaks and Quinn can feel the brush of air when Rachel leans down, her hand sliding along Quinn’s cheek to brush a strand of hair back before pulling away.

“Good,” Rachel says, and, “Goodnight.”

Quinn feels the heat from Rachel’s hand on her cheek until she falls asleep.

-

It’s easy, almost, the pattern they fall into. How Quinn slips into it, allowing herself to watch Rachel across rooms without schooling her face in impassiveness.

They walk home, usually, and it’s easy to get through days when Quinn knows she has a bed and good food and late-night conversation to go home -- back, not home, Rachel’s can’t be home, but, well -- to. Rachel, for being somewhat severe in person sometimes rests a hand on Quinn’s lower back when they walk, like that will make the pressure better.

It’s easy to adjust to sometimes falling asleep with Rachel leaning one arm over the edge of her mattress and curling a strand of Quinn’s hair around her fingers until they go limp with sleep. It’s not invasive in the least and sometimes Quinn wakes up with an extra blanket over her like maybe Rachel woke up and saw that Quinn was cold and gave her one from the bed.

Quinn wonders why it's so easy sometimes, walking down the halls in school and seeing Rachel at her locker with Tina and Mercedes, a glint in her eye that says she's telling them something she wants to do later at Glee and there will be hell (sunshine-y hell) to pay if they don't.

They don't talk much in school, even as one month of staying on Rachel's floor (admittedly in a comfortable mattress, warm most nights by the heater or with whatever Rachel's last words were) turns into multiple months.

Enough time, in fact, that a phone call from her cousin a month before the baby was due (“Quinn, baby, just move home. They'll take you back.” – but she'd tried, too many times, too many hurts) settled sour in her stomach but left her only minutes later, Rachel coming upstairs with fresh-baked cookies and over-eager eyes.

“Hey,” Rachel had said, “it'll be okay. Whatever that was, don't even. You're fine here and you'll be, whatever, fine here until you need to be.” She'd laughed at the end, settled shoulder-to-shoulder next to Quinn against the bed frame and picked up a cookie, shoving almost the whole of it into her mouth.

Quinn had looked at her, profile up close, and wanted to be disgusted. Instead, she smiled, both at the words and at Rachel's comfortableness around her, something Quinn almost felt she earned. She grinned and took a cookie and didn't think of her cousins phone call until she laid down for sleep. (Then, even, Rachel's hand dangling over the side of the mattress, close enough to reach out and touch – hold – for comfort. That made everything better.)

-

With only a month or less left, Quinn isn't much use beyond her voice at practice. She moves from the piano bench to the stack of performance bleachers to a chair, singing along and trying to get comfortable, and mostly zoning out during the choreography.

She zones out enough, thinking of hospitals and money and catching Finn's eyes in-between pauses to try and say things she can't say out of habit. It's not for a little while until the argument that she notices the noise in the room escalating, and when she looks up and stands, everyone is mostly centered around Rachel, protesting something with the dance moves.

Quinn has a moment of thinking about ignoring it – it's Rachel, she's probably right and will get her way, anyway, – but Rachel makes a face at her and Quinn sighs, walking over.

“Okay,” she says, “what's going on.”

It's easy enough to listen to everyone, talking at once and over each other, when they've been doing it all for so long now. It doesn't make it fun, though.

“Alright,” Quinn says, crossing her eyes briefly at the thought of having everyone start talking again – she still isn't sure what is going on, but. “Just. Do Rachel's thing, it sounds like the best, and you'll be fine. We're pretty much always fine when we listen to Rachel anyway.”

Rachel smiles at her, all bright and pleased, and even though Quinn has no idea what she actually supported.

When they walk out of the school together, Quinn taking the wide front steps carefully on an afterthought, Rachel brushes their shoulders together and says, “Thanks. You didn't have to, but – thanks.”

Quinn stops on the steps and finds herself staring, just a little, body and mind out of focus with hormones and what-ifs and stress, and looking at the way the sunlight catches on the dark flyaway strands of hair framing Rachel's face.

And –

“Let's go home,” Rachel says, rolling her eyes in a sort of impatient Rachel way and wrapping an arm through Quinn's to get her to keep moving down the steps.

“Home,” Quinn echos, thinking quickly momanddad, school, _Rachel's._ “Yes. Let's go home.”

-

The baby comes in a rush of time that feels like forever and feels like nothing. Quinn hears everything they say in delivery with too-sharp accuracy and in white noise rushes.

Her mom is there, when it's all over, and she pushes into the room where Quinn is laying, looking down at the tiny, tiny baby in her arm with glazed over eyes, body feeling light as air and her chest feeling hard and suffocating with all the emotions she can't decide on letting out.

“Mom,” she manages, shocked but not quite, and her mom is just walking forward like she's meant to be in the room, like she'd been there for all the months Quinn needed her. She looks guarded Quinn wants to look away.

Rachel peeks in the room before her mom says anything (probably can't find anything to say, and at the very least wouldn't say anything Quinn wanted to hear anyway,) and in her arms, the baby reaches up in a fragile, small way and brushes her knuckles against Quinn's chin.

“Quinn,” her mom starts, but Quinn looks past her.

“Rachel,” Quinn says, “Rachel – come here, look.”

Rachel comes over, hesitant walking around Quinn's mother but she straightens her back when she gets nearer to Quinn, and Quinn realizes she's trying to look strong for her sake.

“Look at her,” Quinn says, her voice shaky to her own ears, like the first time she'd managed to backflip from the top of the tower, so afraid everything would go wrong but amazed to find herself on two feet, eyes squeezed painfully shut and everything just – perfect. “She's perfect.”

When Quinn looks up from the baby, her baby, Rachel is staring right at her, grinning soft and proud.

“Yes,” Rachel says, not looking away from Quinn or down at the baby, “she is.”

-

The first night back at Rachel's – or, really, at home. It's home now – Quinn feels unsure again.

(Her mom hadn't offered to take her back, hadn't said much at all, all pleasantries and Quinn wondered the whole time why her mother couldn't be strong for her and why she wouldn't stop talking because Rachel was asleep in the chair next to her bed and she didn't want her mother to wake her up.)

They had started to set up a nursery at Rachel's before the baby was born. Quinn participated somewhat half-heartedly, trying not to think of having to stay there, always thinking of raising her baby at home. (Except, well, now Rachel's is home.)

They only had one wall painted, and Rachel had tried to puzzle together the crib at one point while Quinn sat against the wall and worked on Spanish worksheets.

When Rachel leads her upstairs this time, though, the nursery is done, painted a bright sunshine-yellow with the white crib all put together.

In her arms, the baby makes a small noise, eyes still shut, and Quinn feels too much, grateful and guilty and loved. Rachel stands back and looks pleased, helps Quinn lay the baby in it's crib, quiet all the while.

Quinn doesn't want to leave the nursery, but after a while Rachel leads her back to the bedroom.

“We can set up a bed in there, I think,” Rachel says. Her voice is quieter than Quinn remembers, and her eyes are bright. “There might be room for a twin by the changing table.”

Quinn shifts foot to foot. Her shirt hangs loose over her stomach now, and it's strange not to feel the material stretching against her stomach.

The mattress that had been permanently rolled out from under Rachel's bed is pushed back in, and Quinn stares where it used to be, confused.

“I didn't think you'd need the bottom since you don't have to roll out of bed anymore,” Rachel says, when she notices Quinn looking.

“Where --” Quinn starts, but she looks up at the bed, full size and spacious but probably small enough that Quinn could wake up with Rachel curled warm around her, a hand tangled in her hair, around her waist. Pressed close, soft, comfortable.

Rachel is frowning when Quinn gets up, the sort of Rachel-frown that only comes out when Rachel thinks no one in Glee is looking at her.

“I didn't mean to be weird, or anything,” Rachel says, “we can pull it back up.” Her voice lilts up with an edge.

“No, hey,” Quinn says, fast, and she steps forward and, on impulse, launches herself onto the bed, bouncing into the middle, laughing with the exhilaration and movement of it, her body feeling so much lighter and moveable.

Rachel laughs, too, rushes forward and jumps next to her.

“A real mattress,” Quinn says, “this is nice.” When she stretches out, her arm overlaps Rachel's, and Rachel uses it to pull herself closer.

“Hi,” Rachel says, face close and eyes too-bright.

Quinn scoots closer and curls in from her stretch.

“Do you feel different?” Rachel asks. Quinn can see the individual points of her eyelashes, the way they hit almost to her brow-line when she blinks, so long.

Quinn does feel different, and she also feels new. The weight of Rachel's fingers as they curl around her own feels nice and comfortable, and when Quinn blinks upwards she stretches her neck and brushes her lips against the long, smooth line of Rachel's exposed neck. She drags her lips down dry and soft, listening to the pattern of Rachel's breathing and rests her head against Rachel's chest when her lips reach the soft cotton collar of her shirt.

“Yeah, I do,” Quinn breathes, soft. She thinks, _home._

Rachel curls around her with a smile pressed into the crown of Quinn's head, and they sleep.


End file.
